Wayne Ambler, a light-hitting infielder who averaged .224 in three prewar seasons, enjoyed an unusual professional baseball career during the Great Depression of the 1930s. A 5'8" athlete who started out in the big leagues and later played in the high minors, Ambler joined the Philadelphia Athletics after graduating from Duke University with a Bachelor's Degree in Business Administration in mid-1937.
Connie Mack had given the blue-eyed, brown-haired youngster tuition money to attend Duke, and Wayne was always grateful for the opportunity to attend college. In 1989 he was inducted into the Duke Sports Hall of Fame.
Ambler played in 56 games during the 1937 season. Despite hitting over .500 in his first five games, he averaged only .216. His problems at the plate began with a jammed thumb in June.
But in August his hitting declined further as a result of a collision on the basepaths with Bennie Huffman. A rookie for the St. Louis Browns, Huffman, a catcher, injured his right shoulder-and the injury affected his throwing for years.
But Ambler suffered a broken jaw and was forced out of the lineup for three weeks. Before the jaw was entirely healed, he returned to play the final month of the season. Due mainly to the injuries, his "recruit" year ended up being a season the optimistic and personable college grad hoped to overcome.
Wayne's best year came in 1938 when he played 120 games, stayed healthy, and hit .234 with 38 RBI. The following summer, used mainly as a reserve (he got into 95 games and batted 227 times), he slipped to .211. The Athletics sold him to the New York Giants after the season, and the Giants optioned him to Jersey City of the International League.
In 1940 Ambler played for Jersey City and batted .218. In 1941 he was traded to Indianapolis of the American Association, where he improved at the plate to .245. An exceptional fielder, the right-handed batter never hit for a high average. Often fighting his way out of a slump, his lifetime minor league figure was .237, only 13 points above his career mark in the majors.
When World War II interrupted American life on December 7, 1941, Ambler dropped baseball, joined the Navy, and became a gunnery officer on a merchant ship. Following the war he returned to his hometown of Abington, worked with the trucking industry in Philadelphia, and played semipro ball in the evenings for ten years. His club played 6-8 games a week, and he earned $25 a game.
Ambler never thought about returning to the Big Show. Instead, he coached sandlot baseball in Abington, where he supervised a summer program involving with as many as 200 youths.
Reminiscing during a 1997 interview, Ambler shared some of his highlight memories:
"I went straight up [to the Athletics] when I graduated in 1937. I joined the ball club on May 31st. I flew up to Washington from Duke and got on a train to St. Louis. That was my first game, the next day out in St. Louis, and I got a base hit the first time up to bat.
"Bill Cissell was the second baseman. I don't know if you remember him. But the club paid about $125,000 for him for a year or so. But he was an alcoholic. Bill's idea of fun when he was on the road was to get with the cops and ride around to the bars and see what was going on.
"A couple days before I joined the club Cissell took a knife away from some guy, blade-first. His hand was bandaged up. He was a tough guy and he was going to play. But Connie Mack started me on my first day, and that's how I got started.
"So I didn't have any minor league career until after three years in the big leagues."
Ambler grew up playing with baseball:
"I just loved it. I played ball all the time. And I played ball at George School, a Quaker prep school near Philadelphia."
Born on November 8, 1915, the youngest son of Charles and Ann Ambler, Wayne had an older brother and three older sisters. Wayne graduated from Abington High in February 1932. Turning seventeen after graduation, he attended George School for a year and a half, hoping to go to college.
"One of the umpires for our games was named Jim Rumsey," Ambler recollected. "He was a basketball referee, too, and he was one of Connie Mack's 'bird dogs,' not really a paid scout. He recommended me, and they let me come down and work out at the Shibe Park. I would go out on the field when the irregulars and the pitchers were taking batting practice.
"I did that for a year or two. I was working out around Labor Day in 1933. Jack Coombs, the Duke baseball coach, spent his summers in Kennebunkport, Maine. He was on his way back to Duke, and he stopped to see Mr. Mack. The two of them were sitting in a box when I was working out in the infield.
"They called me over and asked if I wanted to go to Duke.
"Well, I didn't know where the hell Duke was!"
Ambler laughed, and continued, "I wanted to go to college, but I didn't have any money.
"So I said, 'Sure.' Two days later I was on a train headed for Duke. Jack Coombs got me jobs. I worked in the dining hall for my meals. I sold tickets and programs at the football games. Connie Mack gave me a little money on the side for tuition. I don't know whether that was legal then, or not. I didn't ask.
"I played ball in the summertime at Duke. We were allowed to play for money then, so long as it was not organized ball. It was what they call an 'outlaw league.'
"After the first year, Mr. Mack said, 'Do you want to go back again?'
"I said, 'Sure,' so he gave me some money again, and away I went. I went to Duke for four years."
Ambler, who hit .476 as a senior, earned a few hundred dollars playing baseball in the Coastal Plain League during the summers:
"The Duke team would go down to Greenville. Charlie Keller played at Kinston. The Alabama team came up to another town, and Jim Tabor from Alabama played there. Billy Hitchcock from Auburn played. Each town would have sort of a college team, so you would play all summer against each other. We got $25 a week, which wasn't bad money during the Depression."
Referring to his big league debut in 1937, Ambler recalled, "The first 16 times at bat, I had nine hits. Then I jammed a thumb going after a ground ball, and I didn't play for a while."
But in early August he broke his jaw in a collision:
"I was playing second base, and a catcher from St. Louis named Bennie Huffman was on first base. It was a bunt situation, so I was moving in a little bit toward the baseline and over a little bit towards first base.
"The batter popped the bunt up in the air towards first base. You couldn't tell immediately whether the pitcher or the first baseman was going to be able to catch it, or whether it would drop. So Huffman waited until the ball dropped.
"In the meantime I headed for first, since it was a bunt in fair territory. Huffman put his head down when he started digging for second, and I was running to first with my head to the right, watching the ball. Neither one of us saw the other.
"We collided, and we were knocked out cold. They had to revive us. It knocked me out of the game. I broke my jaw and also hurt my shoulder. I sat on the bench. After the game I went into the shower. When the shower water hit me, I said, 'What happened?'
"I didn't remember a thing."
But it wasn't long before Ambler returned to the diamond.
"The A's weren't doing so well. They were in Cleveland and I was in Abington.
"I wrote to the 'old man' [Mack] out there and told him I would work out with the Phillies and try to get in shape in a week or so. Then when they came home, I could finish the last month of the season at home.
"So I got a telegram the next day, which said, 'Meet us in Detroit.'
"I flew to Detroit, which was kind of unusual at that time. I finished the season with the club. But I never did get back into shape. I shouldn't have played so soon after breaking my jaw. I shouldn't have played so soon after jamming my thumb either.
"But you played hurt in those days. Baseball was much different than it is now. You figured if you didn't play, somebody else would have your job."
Partly as a result, Ambler batted only .216 in 1937.
"The thumb didn't help me. For the rest of the season, every time I hit the ball, it would jar the thumb. I had a big, thick piece of rubber. I would either tape it to the bat or tape it to my thumb. I tried it both ways. It didn't do much good either way, but that's what I used for the rest of the summer. That was stupid."
In 1938 the Abington native averaged .234 in 120 games, all but four at shortstop-instead of his usual second base position.
"That's the year when Skeeter Newsome got beaned. He got beaned in spring training, and he was the shortstop.
"When I was in spring training in 1938, Connie had decided that I was going to go to Williamsport in the Eastern League. He sent me by bus to where they trained, in Raiford, North Carolina. When I got off the bus in Raiford, they had a telegram there that said, 'Report back. Join us in Richmond.'
"That was the day Newsome got beaned, and Russ Peters was his backup, and I was a second baseman. When I got to Richmond, they said, 'You're gonna be a backup shortstop.' I hadn't played short since high school.
"In one of the first games Russ played, at Washington, the Senators had a fellow on second base, Mel Almada, who was quite a good baserunner. The batter hit a ground ball to Russ at short, and he booted it. After he booted it, he walked after it, looking down at the ground, and Almada turned third base and scored.
"And Mr. Mack said to me, 'Go down and warm up in the bullpen.'
"When the inning was over, he took Peters out, and I became the shortstop for the rest of the season. That night he sold Russ to Atlanta. Russ was not a bad ballplayer, and later [in 1940] he came back and played for Cleveland.
"But when Russ didn't hustle, and he put his head down, bingo! He was gone."
Reflecting on his shift to shortstop, Amber said, "I didn't really have the strong arm for short, but I got rid of the ball quickly, which kind of compensated."
Regarding Philadelphia finishing seventh, eighth, and seventh during the years 1937 through 1939, Wayne joked, "We fought it out with the St. Louis Browns every year!"
Unlike most players, however, Ambler was not yet married, so he lived at home with his family.
"Fresh out of college, I could not afford an automobile, and I lived in Abington, a suburb of Philadelphia, about 12 miles from Shibe Park.
"To 'get to work' every day I took a bus to the subway. Then I took the subway down Broad Street to Lehigh Avenue. The old Phillies' ballpark, Baker Bowl, was on that corner. There I could hop a trolley or walk the remaining eight city blocks to Shibe Park.
"If it was not too hot I would walk to the park, but I always took the trolley on the way home. The total time spent was between an hour and a hour-and-a-half each way.
"Buying a used car for the 1938 and 1939 seasons gave me more joy than today's players get when they invest their signing bonus in a Porchse/Jag/Mercedes.
"Of course, I still considered myself lucky. I was living at home while the other A's players were paying rent for dingy apartments near the ballpark."
In 1939 Wayne averaged .211 in 95 games, again mostly at shortstop. After the season Philadelphia sold him to the New York Giants.
"In 1940 the Giants sent me to Jersey City of the International League as a second baseman. At the end of the '40 season, the Giants traded me to Cincinnati for a left-handed pitcher named Milt Shoffner. So I went to spring training in Tampa with Cincinnati, and I hoped to get that shortstop job.
"The Reds had just won the World Series, and their shortstop, Billy Myers, was kind of semi-retired.
"But guess who beat me out? Eddie Joost, who came down from the Boston Bees. Joost beat me out for the shortstop job in Cincinnati in 1941."
Cincinnati sent Ambler to Indianapolis of the American Association, where he played 139 games and hit a career-best .245.
"That was my second year in the minor leagues and my last year in pro ball. I joined the Navy right after Pearl Harbor.
"I was a gunnery officer on a merchant ship, what they called 'armed guard' service. They put a Navy gunnery officer and 26 Navy gunners on these merchant ships. All we had to do was man the guns and defend the ship. I was in both oceans, but mostly the Atlantic.
"I got into the cross-channel invasion in 1944, and that was interesting. After that war ended, I went to the Pacific. But Japan surrendered while our ship was lying off the Philippines waiting to go into action."
Did the war affect his baseball career?
"The war did hurt me. The Phillies were interested in bringing me up again, but the war killed that.
"I had the chance to play baseball in the Navy when I was at Little Creek, near Norfolk, Virginia, where they had the gunnery officer training school. But I was around twenty-eight, and well, I said, 'Let's see what the war is like.'
"I know they had some great Navy teams, and it was probably a mistake not playing."
After the war, Ambler returned to his home in the Philadelphia area, found a manager's job in trucking, and played semipro ball.
"I supervised the trucking, the warehousing, the packing, and the shipping. I worked at a distribution center. They brought in stuff from overseas, and we delivered it to the stores."
The former big leaguer worked in the same business for 40 years, retiring in 1986. During the first ten years he played semipro ball and earned about $25 a game.
"You could make some pretty good money playing semipro after the war. After you got out of work in the evenings, we'd play six, seven games a week. We'd play night ball, day ball, and double-headers on Sunday. The money sure helped.
"We played all the great Negro League teams. I played against Satchel Paige, Leon Day, Josh Gibson, Larry Doby, and a lot of great players. Some clubs were the regular Negro National and Negro American League teams, and sometimes they had barnstorming teams."
How much did Wayne earn with the Athletics?
"I figure I made $10,000 for the three years I played, including the tuition money I received. Connie Mack sold me for $10,000, so I figure I played for nothing.
"But somebody else says," he added, with a laugh, "'Well, that's what you were worth!'"
Ambler also coached Little League teams in his hometown for years. In 1960 one of his all-star teams had Reggie Jackson, who was then fourteen.
"I had Reggie for two weeks, every twilight for two hours, then we had him for three games. He was quite a hitter even then."
Wayne Ambler had many great memories about his experiences in baseball. For example, on his first trip to Yankee Stadium in 1938, he enjoyed a 5-for-5 game, rapping four singles and a double.
The Duke grad recalled that the toughest pitcher for him to hit was Bob Feller. But he rated Tommy Bridges, Johnny Allen, Lefty Gomez, and Buck Newsome as tough, too.
"And so was every other pitcher in the American League!" he quipped.
Ambler ranked Joe DiMaggio as the greatest player he ever saw, observing that Babe Ruth may have been the greatest-but he only saw the Babe when he (Wayne) was a kid.
"Baseball is a great sport when you're playing the nine innings out on the field. The rest of it, the marketing and the entertainment parts of it, I don't care much for that.
"Today the players are still having a good time playing the game. But with free agents
jumping from team to team, there's no consistency, no loyalty any more.
"They're great ballplayers today. They're bigger, faster, and stronger. And with the gloves they've got now, I don't know how they ever miss one!
"Maybe we had consistency and loyalty because we had no choice. But I liked it the way it was when we played the game. We had more fun."
Wayne Ambler passed away on January 3, 1998.
Also by Jim Sargent
» Remembering Hal White
» More submissions
Posted May 7, 2001.
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